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Enbridge's Line 5 MEDIA Enbridge’s Line 5 BACKGROUNDER June 2021 The pipeline’s ongoing environmental risks to the Great Lakes and the climate Context Line 5 is a 68-year-old pipeline operated by Enbridge Energy. It carries up to 540,000 barrels-per-day or 87 million litres of oil and natural gas liquids per day, from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario, taking a shortcut through Michigan and along the lake bottom of the Straits of Mackinac. As the pipeline travels through the Straits of Mackinac it diverges into two, 20-inch-diameter, parallel pipelines. This is why people sometimes call the Line 5 pipeline system the “dual” or “twin” pipelines. Figure 1. Map of Line 5 pipeline route1 ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE CANADA Media Backgrounder: Enbridge’s Line 5 1 The Mackinac Straits section of Line 5 with a design lifetime of 50 years, has been plagued by a series of issues, ranging from missing protective coating to three dents left by an anchor strike just this past April. It lies in what University of Michigan researchers have called “the worst possible place for an oil spill” in the Great Lakes.2 The Great Lakes are of utmost importance to protect as they hold 21 per cent of the world’s surface freshwater and 84 per cent of North America’s surface freshwater.3 Most of the liquids shipped on Line 5 are delivered to the Sarnia terminal; from there, they supply refineries in Ontario and as far east as the Quebec cities of Montreal and Levis.4 After the anchor strike in April 2020, and ensuing concern about a spill from Line 5, Enbridge proposed to build a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac to house this leg of Line 5. Michigan Governor Whitmer ordered a shutdown of Line 5 for May 12, 2021, citing environmental risks and violation of Michigan’s Public Trust doctrine as well as violations of the 1953 Easement.5 The Public Trust doctrine protects the public's right to use the waters of the Great Lakes for purposes such as navigation, hunting, and fishing. On November 13, 2020, after a year-long review of the easement that allows Enbridge to use the Great Lakes for its private oil pipeline, Governor Whitmer revoked the easement.6 Enbridge has refused to comply and are keeping the pipeline in operation. The company has taken the matter to court, and it is still being decided whether it will get settled in state or federal court.7 Environmental Harm/Ongoing Risk to the Great Lakes, and Serious Concerns Regarding Safety Line 5 has been plagued by a series of issues and has leaked at least 29 times since 1953, spilling 4.5 million liters of oil into the environment, causing harm to nearby communities and waterbodies.8 Enbridge has not been proactive when it comes to maintaining Line 5, which is concerning, especially in light of the company's track record when it comes to oil spills and pipelines.9 Pipeline support violations The 1953 Easement10 requires the dual pipelines to be supported at least every 75 feet to prevent a breach. Long unsupported spans are dangerous because they allow vibrations that can stress the pipeline metal and potentially cause it to rupture and fail. Enbridge documents show that from 1963 to 2012, it knew that multiple unsupported spans exceeded the 75-foot limit and failed to fix them.11 One unsupported length of the pipeline was 421 feet long. Other dangerously long spans were 200', 216', 221', 278', 286', 292', 311', and 359'. Enbridge documents suggest it only repaired unsupported spans greater than 140 feet, almost twice the Easement limit.12 Coating violations The Easement requires Enbridge to maintain a protective coating on the dual pipelines to prevent steel corrosion, which is one of the major causes of pipeline failure. Since at least 2003, Enbridge was notified that a heavy accumulation of biota, like zebra and quagga mussels, made it impossible to inspect the pipeline coating.13 For 13 years after that notice, Enbridge made little to no effort to address the biota problem.14 This means that no one could properly inspect Line 5 for possible coating failure for at least 13 years. When some coating delamination was found in 2014 and 2016, Enbridge took no action until a federal ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE CANADA Media Backgrounder: Enbridge’s Line 5 2 court order forced it to fully inspect the dual pipelines’ exterior. In March 2017, Enbridge told Michigan it had found no coating gaps. Five months later, Enbridge changed its story and reported that three gaps had been found. Enbridge then disclosed that it knew about the gaps since 2014 but did not report them to the State.15 Minimum curvature violations The Easement specifies how much the pipelines can bend or deviate from a straight line, known as its minimum curvature. This rule is intended to prevent dangerous structural stresses from being placed on the pipelines. Enbridge documents reveal 20 to 25 times that the curvature exceeded this specification. These curvature violations remain uncorrected. There is no documented proof that Enbridge attempted to comply with the pipeline curvature limits during the original installation of Line 5, suggesting that the curvature limits were ignored by Enbridge from the very beginning. This is a fundamental violation of the Easement.16 Unreasonable Risk of Harm Pipelines spill for many reasons: material failures, insufficient maintenance, human error, and external events. There is no fail-safe way to guarantee pipeline safety, so there will always be a risk of harm. For example, in a recent two-year span, there were multiple events that could have caused Line 5 to fail and spill:17 • In 2018, the pipelines were struck and damaged by a ship's anchor, even though a no-anchor zone was in place. • In 2019, pipeline supports were severely damaged by Enbridge contractors by mistake. Despite prevention and warning measures, the damage was not discovered for a year. Enbridge has been in violation of the terms of the Easement. The failure to monitor and react promptly to incidents is reminiscent of the attitudes and behaviours that led to the 4.1-million-litre oil spill from Enbridge’s Line 6B into the Kalamazoo River in 2010.18 That spill took 17 hours to shut down and was discovered by a local utility worker and not by Enbridge’s leak technology.19 The risk of harm associated with Line 5 is even greater because modeling shows the extreme currents of the Straits could spread spilled oil over a 1000 kms of Great Lakes shoreline. This is one of the reasons why University of Michigan scientists called the Straits of Mackinac the worst possible place for an oil spill in the Great Lakes.20 The image below shows the route that Line 5 traverses through the lands and waters of the Great Lakes basin. The image also shows the 29 documented and known of incidents where Line 5 has spilled. An interactive version of the 29 incidents can be found here. ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE CANADA Media Backgrounder: Enbridge’s Line 5 3 Figure 2. Map of Line 5 pipeline route and documented spills21 GHG emissions & Climate Impacts The deal signed between Enbridge and former Michigan Governor Snyder before he left office was to extend the operation of Line 5 for 99 years by building a tunnel through the Straits of Mackinac.22 It would continue to transport 87 million liters of oil and natural gas liquids daily, that when burned, will yield over 57 million metric tons of atmospheric carbon annually – more carbon than is emitted by the United States 3 largest coal plants combined.23 This long-term investment in fossil fuel infrastructure is directly at odds with the broad scientific consensus that immediate steps must be taken to decarbonize the economy to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE CANADA Media Backgrounder: Enbridge’s Line 5 4 On top of this, a recent study from Harvard showed that fossil fuels contribute to one in five deaths worldwide.24 Economic Implications Supply and demand of crude oil in Canada and the United States Canada produces more crude oil than it can consume. Crude oil production in the United States and Canada has grown substantially over the past several years. In contrast to the strong growth in supply and exports, crude oil demand in the U.S. and Canada has been essentially flat.25,26,27,28 This growth in oil supply has been accompanied by new pipelines and some existing pipelines have been expanded. Enbridge says the tunnel will take four years to complete but it is more likely to take on the upwards of ten years to complete. In fact, the original proposal given by Enbridge was for 10 years.29 Court delays, permitting delays –and construction delays, if they ever get the permits –will all likely cause the tunnel to take longer than four years to complete. Demand for crude oil is only going to continue to drop as fossil fuels are phased out in the coming decade and beyond. The International Energy Agency recently released a flagship report Net-zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector which clearly sets out a plan to phase out fossil fuels.30 It sets out a pathway, resulting in a clean, dynamic, and resilient energy economy dominated by renewable power like solar and wind instead of fossil fuels. It also sets out more than 400 milestones to guide the global journey to net zero by 2050. These include, from today, no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, and no further final investment decisions for new unabated coal plants.
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